Didn't He?
by Sano S. Sagara
Summary: A bad day at the surgery makes John ask himself terrible questions, and Sherlock struggles to find the right words. Sherlock John friendship
1. Chapter 1

Didn't He?

Chapter One

* * *

John Watson came home from the surgery over two hours later than normal. He came into the flat like a ghost, soft and silent, alone in his thoughts. He did not follow his normal course of actions upon entering the flat either. His coat, gloves, hat, and scarf were worn on the sullen shuffle from the door to the fireplace, not discarded at the door like normal. He didn't even shrug out of his layers once he had collapsed bonelessly into his armchair in front of the hearth.

John stared numbly into the flames, lips bloodless and cheeks pink from the cold day. His hands were limp in his lap and not even a sigh or grumble broke the heavy mute silence of his form.

Sherlock did not notice these things because he wanted to, but because his flat-mate's mannerisms had been so thoroughly ingrained into his daily doings that the abrupt change couldn't have been clearer if outlined in self-phoresing paint.

The strangeness needled into Sherlock's concentration until he could barely pretend to be ignoring the fair haired man hunched in on himself next to the fire.

Why had John not made his customary cuppa? Why had John not put up his outerwear and donned his new light green house slippers? Why was John staring unseeing into the fire rather than bustling in their shared tiny kitchen or peering over Sherlock's shoulder?

The need to know swelled inside of Sherlock with each second of out of character behavior. His eyes wouldn't focus on the slide of tobacco ash before him. His mind was whirling away from the case and orbiting John Watson like a speck of dust caught in Saturn's rings.

He changed the slide. Watson wasn't covered in blood, so if he was attacked it couldn't have been too viciously; besides, the good doctor was very capable of self protection.

It wasn't raining, nor were the doctor's clothes wet from the passing splash of a cab. There was no case that lay heavily on the doctor's mind, Sherlock hadn't destroyed the flat, for once there were no extra body parts lying about either.

What was the cause of John's very un-John-like behavior?

How could he figure it out? All deductive reasoning was failing Sherlock. He couldn't just ask the other man… could he? That's what normal functioning humans did, no? They inquired as to the mental and physical well-being of each other by simply asking.

Was he allowed to do that? It seemed such a personal question. How would he go about it?

How are you? No, inflection could alter that into a perfunctory statement as well as a sincere question.

What is wrong? Accusatory, maybe (unlikely) nothing was wrong.

What happened? Same problem.

Sherlock sat, slides forgotten in favor of running the acceptable pleasantries of the situation in his mind; looking for the one that seemed appropriate, as John let the silence grow.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two

* * *

Everything seemed darker today to one John Watson. He had arrived at the surgery to discover a frantic teenager stumbling from a car, hauling the unconscious body of his companion.

Low blood pressure, no pupil action, no response to stimuli of any kind at all. The poor boy had died about ten minutes after getting into the ER.

John had placed his gloved hands on either side of the examining table and sighed heavily. Brow furrowed, he glanced at the wall clock and turned to his attending nurse,

'Time of death: 7:20 am. Cause unknown as of yet, presumed fatal stroke,' as he was speaking the door to the ER had blown open, the first boy racing in and flinging himself over the body of his friend, trailing a stricken looking nurse.

'Charlie? CHARLIE!' wailing the boy pounded his fists on the still chest of Charlie Kaeigh, 'No! No No, no no no nononono! You can't DO this to me! Charlie, come back!'

John moved to pull the despondent boy from the body but his fingers closed on empty air. Legs gone weak the boy had slid to the floor, sobbing, still clutching his friend's stiff fingers.

John knelt too, wrapping a strong arm around quivering shoulders. He looked up at the nurse who mouthed a name.

'Kyle,' he tried tentatively, the boy leaned harder against his side, 'Kyle, go ahead. Let it out,'

And so like that they stayed, on the floor leaning against a cabinet until well after the body had been taken to the morgue. Eventually Kyle extracted himself from John's hold and stood, drawing shaky breath and rubbing his raw eyes.

'You were close,' John said quietly.

'Flat-mates. At community together,' Kyle's voice was flat and raspy, '6 years,'

'What happened?' John asked, not unkindly.

'We were arguing,' a horrible excuse for a laugh, 'about why the bread was in the icebox. He said it went stale faster. I thought it made better toast cold,' Kyle clutched at his face,

'We were yelling- a right proper row, cursing, bringing up things that shouldn't have been. All that happens when you live together too long and a little argument happens. You know, right?' Big pleading eyes, red rimmed and a soft grey-green.

'Aye,' John knew.

'And he just stopped. Mouth working but no sound comin' out. He sorta, Charlie sorta wobbled then snapped out of it and said my name like he were confused all a sudden and he…' another sob tore free,

'Toppled forward onto the table. Not breathin', no nothing. I called emergency but our land lady had just parked so we rushed here. Ambulance woulda taken too long,' Here Kyle froze and looked at John in utter despair,

'Was that wrong?! Did I, did, would he have-DID I KILL CHARLIE?!'

'Absolutely not,' Immediate, 'No, don't think that a moment Kyle,' John gripped the paling teen's elbow tight, 'Like as not there was nothing better you could have done,'

A kind of horrible relief filled Kyle's face before he pressed his eyes shut again.

'Do… you know what the last thing I said to him before he-,' a wave of the hands. John waited.

'I told him I hated his guts. Now… I, oh god, he knew, right? He knew I was lying-Right!? He knew he was my best friend? Right?!'

John gathered the shaking youth in another embrace and pet Kyle's head gently as he cried again, no tears left but just wracking sobs,

'He knew. I'm sure he did,'

'He knew,'

The rest of John's day had been as normal. Elderly in for their shots, a broken arm on a cute little girl from falling off a horse, two cases of food poisoning, and the usual bevy of coughs, colds, and paperwork.

But all John could see or hear was Kyle's plea.

"He knew, right?"

A terrible thought came unbidden to John's mind. Were he to die, would Sherlock be as broken hearted as Kyle had been? What if Sherlock died, would he know how much a part of John's life the gangly consulting detective had become?

They fought. Loudly, often. Over similar things- though eyeballs in the microwave and bread in the icebox were only cursorily similar. What if John's last words to Sherlock one day would be ones of in-the-moment malice? If Sherlock's to John were how stupid the doctor could be. What if his friend died…

They were friends, right?

John was so preoccupied with his thoughts that it wasn't until a text from Harry that he realized he's been sitting in his darkening office for an hour and a half.

Would Sherlock be worried that he was so late without word? No texts from the man were in his inbox. John shrugged into his outerwear and locked up with a steadily growing feeling of heaviness in his stomach. His silent cab ride home did little to quell his mind, and when Sherlock didn't even look up from his microscope at John's entrance his mood darkened even more.

The wild haired consulting detective had effectively pervaded the entirety of John's life to the point of total saturation, but it seemed like John wasn't even worth a 'hullo' at the door. Two hours could have meant large trouble, but Sherlock hadn't so much as texted to see what had kept him.

John knew that he could never go back to a normal life. One without Sherlock. If he lost his flat mate, if Sherlock sent him away, he would enlist straightaway, run back to the war and do his best to forget the excitement and crazed adventures of living with Sherlock Holmes. Apparently, however, Sherlock would miss him no more than a missing area rug.

So John sat by the fire and brooded, wondering if he could stand Sherlock's apathy to a show of friendship, and never once realized that the silence in the kitchen was not that of scientific concentration. It was the silence of a man who was worried to his soul but had no way to show it.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter three

* * *

Sherlock saw John shift and remove his gloves. He opened his mouth to ask how the doctor was- he'd finally settled on the colloquial and informal 'what is up', but what emerged instead was a throaty rasp. He cleared his throat to try again but John's gaze pinned to words to his tongue.

Dark shadows under hooded and listless eyes. No spark of life, no shine of energy or laughter peeked out from under long blond lashes. John was looking at him with the hollow stare of a cadaver.

"What, Sherlock?" John finally asked, starling Holmes so badly that he blurted out the first idea his brain latched onto.

"You never made tea," no, stupid, no no that isn't what he meant to say at all.

John's mouth turned down at the edges as if Sherlock's answer had disappointed him, "One minute, I'll make your cuppa just as soon as I've put my things away,"

Sherlock watched, quailing inside for having said so grievously the wrong thing, as John swept from the room with his bag. Sherlock leapt to his feet,

"No!"

John froze in the entryway to the hall, not turning, not responding, for some reason not even breathing.

"John, I didn't mean to say that," Sherlock began, grasping for words.

John scoffed without turning, "You always mean to say what you say Sherlock," his voice was listless.

Blasted emotions. There were no universal words for them, and Sherlock floundered momentarily, "I, John, wanted to ask, uh, I mean I wanted to know…" still John refused to look at him and it made thinking hard.

He was silent too long Holmes realized when John made to continue to his room.

"John-are-you-alright?" he blurted out, and then cringed; not knowing if he'd asked the wrong question.

His flat mate swung around quickly, eyes bulging slightly, "What did you just say?" It came out as a very un-John-like squeak.

Sherlock squirmed in his seat, not meeting that suddenly piercing gaze, "I apologize John. I had merely noticed that you, after coming home two hours and twenty six minutes later than normal, had not made your usual cuppa. Nor did you as usual place your outerwear in the closet or your bag in your room. I was unable to deduce an obvious reason for this and have come to the conclusion that something I cannot see is bothering you- if something is bothering you. It is my understanding that friends inquire to the state of being of each other, but was unable to decide on a proper phrasing. I apologize," he said all this so quickly that he felt light headed.

Sherlock vehemently wished he better understood the way normal people felt. He also wished that John's face was not such a blank page to him at the moment. His chest heaved with the strain of emotion.

Sherlock's brain buzzed. What was this he felt? Concern. Concern for who? Not himself. Concern for John. Worry for John. He felt possessive of John's well being. Sherlock wanted nothing to cloud John's face. Wanted to understand and help his friend.

"We, are… friends, John, are we not?" Hesitant, unsure, vulnerable-all things that Sherlock Holmes was not but he would be anything for John.

Because John would be anything for him.

And that was how friendship worked.

Right?


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter four

* * *

John Watson was sure that for the first time in his life he was going to faint. Sherlock BLOODY Holmes has just, in no more than three breaths, proclaimed their friendship, asked after his well being, and made clear that he knew John's daily habits.

He was stunned, floored, cold-clocked, flabbergasted, any number of colorful euphemisms would be inadequate to describe the sheer shock of Sherlock's short speech.

"We, are… friends, John, are we not?"

That brought him around quick enough.

"Yes!" a bit too loud, "Yes, we are. Friends," John grinned, "Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: Friends,"

Sherlock stopped cringing as if in expectation of a blow, "We are friends," he repeated, smiling.

John bounced a bit on the balls of his feet and rubbed some warmth into his hands, "Right-oh, then, I'll make us that cuppa. What have you got over there anyway Sherlock? Something interesting?"

John heard Sherlock return to his seat and smiled to himself. Soon the flat filled again with the normal noises of cohabitancy. John fussed with the kettle, and Sherlock bounced half formed ideas off the back of that blond head. The consulting detective cursed as a puff of breath sent tobacco ashes scattering across his notes, and the blogger grumbled at the game on the tele.

As John settled into his chair, Sherlock sprawled on the couch opposite, he began to tell Sherlock about Charlie Kaeigh and Kyle Smithsen.

Holmes reached a hand toward John and pointed,

"Of course he knew,"

'Of course he knew,'


End file.
